You've been managing your anxiety the way everyone says you should. When something makes you anxious, you step back. You stay within your comfort zone. You tell yourself it's okay to take a break, to recover, to not push yourself when you're already stressed.

And it makes sense, right? If certain situations trigger anxiety, avoiding them should reduce it. If you're burnt out, retreating should help you recover.

Except it's not working.

Your anxiety score is still at 6. The difficult feelings keep showing up. And somehow, life feels like it's shrinking rather than expanding-even though you're doing exactly what you thought would help.

Here's what most people don't realize: the strategy you're using to reduce anxiety is actually the hidden cause keeping it alive.

Why Avoidance Feels Like Relief But Keeps You Stuck

Think about the last time you avoided something that made you anxious. Maybe it was a work task you weren't sure you could handle. Maybe it was a difficult conversation. Maybe it was just leaving the house when you didn't feel up to it.

What happened to your anxiety in that moment when you decided not to do it?

It dropped, didn't it? There was immediate relief. Your nervous system quieted down. You felt like you'd made the right call.

That relief is real. It's not imagined. Research on anxiety maintenance shows that avoidance genuinely does reduce immediate discomfort-which is precisely why it's so hard to stop doing it.

But here's the problem: if avoiding things gives you that relief in the moment, why are you still experiencing so much anxiety overall? Why hasn't your anxiety score come down despite all the careful management?

The Anxiety Pattern You Can't See While You're In It

Let me show you what's actually happening behind the scenes.

When you avoid something that makes you anxious, your brain logs this as important information: "That situation is dangerous. We were right to avoid it. The anxiety was justified."

You never get the chance to discover whether the thing you were anxious about was actually as bad as you thought. You never learn that you could have handled it. You never gather evidence that contradicts the fear.

So the anxiety stays. And often, it grows.

Studies demonstrate that this pattern-called experiential avoidance-provides short-term relief but leads to greater dysfunction and increased distress over time. Clinical guidelines identify avoidance behaviors as core maintaining factors in anxiety disorders, not protective strategies.

The comfort zone you're trying to stay in? It's not reducing your anxiety. It's preserving it.

What the Boom-Bust Cycle Does to Your Anxiety

Now let's look at something else that might sound familiar.

You have good days-days when you feel energetic, capable, like you can finally catch up on everything. So you do. You tackle the work tasks. You handle the errands. You push through your to-do list because you finally have the energy to do it.

Then comes the crash. You're exhausted, overwhelmed, burnt out. So you retreat. You avoid. You tell yourself you're recovering, that you need this rest.

This is called the boom-bust cycle. And while it feels like natural energy management, research on chronic patterns shows that this irregular alternation between excessive activity and forced rest actually reinforces avoidance behavior and emotional distress, contributing to the maintenance of chronic symptoms.

The boom-bust pattern creates an inconsistent lifestyle that keeps the anxiety going. During the boom, you overdo it. During the bust, you avoid and retreat-which provides temporary relief but prevents you from building the one thing that actually reduces anxiety: consistent, sustained engagement.

What Your Housing Crisis Proved About Your Capability

Remember your housing situation? The broken toilet. The person discovered living in the building's cupboard. Having to contact environmental health authorities.

Those weren't things you could avoid. There was no comfort zone to retreat to. You had to deal with it.

And how did you manage?

Better than you thought you would.

You had to engage despite anxiety, and you discovered something important: you could handle it. The thing you might have avoided if you'd had the choice turned out to be manageable when you actually faced it.

This is the evidence your avoidance pattern never lets you collect.

What Actually Reduces Anxiety (It's Not What You Think)

Here's where everything flips.

What if the times you're most tempted to avoid are exactly the times you need to engage? And what if the times you feel energetic and want to do everything are exactly the times you need to moderate?

This is called opposing action-doing the opposite of what your emotional urges tell you to do.

When you're anxious and want to avoid: engage instead (even in small ways).

When you're energetic and want to do everything: moderate instead (do a reasonable amount and stop).

It sounds backwards. When you're anxious, every part of you is screaming to retreat, to avoid, to protect yourself. When you finally have energy, it feels wasteful not to use it.

But research on behavioral patterns demonstrates that this opposing action approach is what actually breaks the cycle. Systematic reviews show that behavioral activation-engaging with valued activities even when anxious-effectively reduces anxiety symptoms. The approach that feels counterintuitive is the one that works.

How Opposing Action Breaks the Cycle

Let's connect this back to your specific situation.

You've been avoiding work tasks when they feel overwhelming. That avoidance provides immediate relief, but it also means the tasks pile up, which creates more anxiety, which makes you want to avoid more. The cycle perpetuates itself.

Meanwhile, on your good days, you try to catch up on everything. You push hard because you feel capable. Then you crash, and the bust period begins again-more avoidance, more anxiety building up, more evidence to your brain that these tasks are genuinely threatening.

The boom-bust pattern and the avoidance pattern work together to maintain the anxiety you're trying to escape.

But when you were forced to engage with the housing situation-when avoidance wasn't an option-you managed it effectively. You proved to yourself that engagement, not avoidance, is where your capability lives.

How to Practice Opposing Action Starting Today

The strategy that works isn't about staying in your comfort zone. It's about deliberately stepping out of it in manageable ways.

Here's a practical starting point: When you notice the urge to avoid a work task because it makes you anxious, commit to engaging with it for just 15 minutes. Not the whole task. Not until it's done. Just 15 minutes.

This small, time-limited engagement does three things:

1. It breaks the negative reinforcement cycle (anxiety → avoidance → relief → more anxiety)

2. It lets you gather evidence that engaging with anxiety-provoking tasks is possible

3. It shows you that the feared consequences often don't materialize, and that anxiety doesn't escalate indefinitely

Track what happens in your activity diary. Notice whether the feared outcome occurs. Notice how your anxiety levels change during and after those 15 minutes of engagement.

You're not trying to eliminate the anxiety immediately. You're practicing staying engaged even when you're uncomfortable, so you can discover what you already proved during the housing crisis: you're more capable than the avoidance pattern has let you believe.

And on the flip side-when you're feeling energetic, practice moderation. Do a reasonable amount of work and then stop, even though you feel like you could do more. This prevents the burnout that triggers the bust cycle.

The goal is consistency, not intensity. Regular, moderate engagement instead of boom-bust extremes.

Why Your Comfort Zone Is Making Things Worse

The anxiety isn't being maintained by the stressful situations in your life. It's being maintained by the pattern of avoidance that feels like it's protecting you.

Every time you avoid, you get short-term relief-but you also teach your brain that the situation was genuinely dangerous. You never get to learn that you could have handled it.

Every time you push too hard during energetic periods and then crash into avoidance during the bust, you reinforce the inconsistency that keeps the anxiety alive.

The pattern is changeable. You've already started changing it-with your driving practice, deliberately facing uncertainty when you stalled on that hill. You managed the situation effectively, and now you know you can.

That same principle applies to the rest of your life. The opposing action approach-engaging when anxious, moderating when energetic-creates the consistent engagement that actually reduces anxiety over time.

The comfort zone isn't protecting you. It's limiting you.

And the way out isn't about feeling less anxious before you engage. It's about engaging even while anxious, so you can discover what you're actually capable of.

What Comes Next

You now understand that avoidance maintains anxiety and that opposing action breaks the pattern. You have a specific practice: 15 minutes of engagement when you notice the urge to avoid.

But here's the question this raises: What do you do when anxiety spikes during that engagement? When you're in the middle of those 15 minutes and the discomfort increases, how do you stay with it without escaping back into avoidance or using subtle safety behaviors that undermine the learning?

That's the skill that turns understanding into lasting change. And it's something worth exploring.